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4000+ Lumen Test & BridgeLux LED Review

I recently became a customer of Newark Electronics (aka Farnell) and noticed they exclusively offered an interesting family of LED arrays by BridgeLux.
Consequently, I noticed a surprising lack of information on CPF or even the web in general.

I decided to evaluate these and share my findings and feelings with my fellow CPF crew!
I spent about a week testing, photographing, exploding TaskLED drivers, etc.. etc..

BridgeLux designed these LEDs to be very bright and low cost. Cost is reduced by excluding optics from the package unlike almost all other LEDs. They are clearly the best 'Lumen/per $' package currently available even versus SSC P7 and Cree MC-E. They destroy the 6-die OSRAM OSTAR in that regard!

The lack of an optic and the wide surface area will make these a perfect candidate for wide area flood lighting but a poor candidate for tightly focused beam patterns.

The resin dome is gummy and sticky. It was VERY DIFFICULT to take pictures without dust and fibers clinging to it.

CLOSE-UP:(NOTE - These pictures were taken after extensive testing, soldering, clamping, etc... and demonstrate wear characteristics.)

Click ANY Close-Up picture for BIG ZOOM!

Model #BXRA-C0400 - 440 Lumens

Model #BXRA-C0800 - 880 Lumens

Model #BXRA-C1200 - 1320 Lumens

Model #BXRA-C2000 - 2200 Lumens

LIGHT 'EM UP!
This set of pictures is of the 1320 Lumen array. The camera has difficulty capturing the true apparent brightness
of these LEDs, especially since there are no optics to generate beam shots. Because of this I took very few
photos to demonstrate brightness.

Relative Brightness - This is roughly the apparent brightness.
In this photo the array is being UNDERDRIVEN at 1000ma output rated at 1052 Lumens!

16 Dies w/ Fuzzies
You'll have fuzzies all over it without meticulous and persistent cleaning.

Underexposed
This photo is greatly underexposed to show the very thin power leads going from die to die.

Blinded By The Light
Opps! This picture was accidental. I was making adjustments when the camera timer ran out. It was too bright to see what I was doing!Indeed... I was using a LuxLuthor 15.6v pack for that test.

THE 4000 LUMEN MONSTER
I decided to push the 2200 Lumen array as far is it could go! The following pictures are the result of that experiment.

A 25 Die LED Is Pretty Crazy

Test Setup
Here is the test bed. To safely push this LED to the extreme I chose to use Peltier cooling to keep temps
as low as possible and keep emitter efficiency as high as possible. The Peltier is powered by a separate 15A power supply.

The brown wire held by the alligator clip is the thermocouple that will allow me to track the case temperature.

LED Case Temperature Before Test
The Peltier cooler brings the LED temperature below freezing before the test begins.

Crank It Up!
In Constant Current mode I set the LED current to a steady 4 Amps.
This is 500mA beyond its absolute maximum rated current!

LED Case Temperature During Test
Even with the Peltier at maximum cooling the case temp still reaches over 200 deg F.

4000+ LUMENS!
At 4000mA the LED output is literally off the chart!
My best interpolation is a Normalized Luminous Flux of 1.9 which calculates to 4180 Lumens!

This photo was taken during the day. The shadow cast on the wall is testament to its ridiculous brightness!

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Personally, I was impressed by these LEDs, enough so that I wanted to take the time to document and share what I was seeing.

The format precludes the use of tight beam optics, but reflectors are likely to still be somewhat effective.
I certainly am willing to bet that we'll see some potent flood monsters from guys like Mac showing up here and there using these LEDs.

You can rest assured you'll see these in a flashlight from me at least! Sometime very soon...

Here is the <DATASHEET> for those of you interested in more technical detail.

Re: .·´¯`·-> !! BridgeLux LED Review & 4000+ Lumen Test!! <-·´¯`·.

This is a great review. The pics give a clear picture of what these emitters are really like. Ie the realative size, and what kind of effort is going to be needed to properly heat sink one of these.

In Him (Jesus Christ) was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
FS: Pocket Power SeriesCustom Maglites , + DIY parts and more!

Re: .·´¯`·-> !! BridgeLux LED Review & 4000+ Lumen Test!! <-·´¯`·.

Thanks for the detailed review!

Your quote:

BridgeLux designed these LEDs to be very bright and low cost. Cost is reduced by excluding optics from the package unlike almost all other LEDs. They are clearly the best 'Lumen/per $' package currently available even versus SSC P7 and Cree MC-E. They destroy the 6-die OSRAM OSTAR in that regard!

This is a great review. The pics give a clear picture of what these emitters are really like. Ie the realative size, and what kind of effort is going to be needed to properly heat sink one of these.

Heat management in general isn't bad at all with these. I have them installed in two applications that I will post in the automotive section.
I only had to go to such extremes with cooling because I was pushing almost 15% beyond the absolute maximum current rating. There is no conceivable practical reason why anyone would ever need to do that.

My tests with TaskLED's hipFlex driver really showed that pushing the 2200 lumen LED at 2.8A gives you huge brightness rated at about 3300 Lumens and manageable heat. Anything more doesn't really payback.

Last edited by NeSSuS-GTE; 03-24-2009 at 03:22 PM.
Reason: more detail

Re: .·´¯`·-> !! BridgeLux LED Review & 4000+ Lumen Test!! <-·´¯`·.

That is insane!

I might have to get myself one of the stars to play around with. Thanks for sharing them.

Edit: Maybe not... Farnell Australia is selling the 440 lumen ones for 41AUD... 12USD <=> 41AUD?!? I get this sneaking feeling that it'd be cheaper to buy a couple from the US site and have them ship it over here. Wonder if they'll allow that, or just redirect me to the Aussie site?

Last edited by Th232; 03-24-2009 at 06:34 PM.

Finning does help dissipate heat. This is why the fins are removed before cooking fish. Otherwise it will throw off the heat and not reach the proper cooking temperature. --Duglite

Re: .·´¯`·-> !! 4000+ Lumen Test & BridgeLux LED Review!! <-·´¯`·.

Good luck collimating that! Its cool anyway to see these ultra high output LEDs coming on the market. However the LEDs here have no place in a flashlight unless all you want is flood. Thank you so much for doing the testing though. Great work.

Re: .·´¯`·-> !! 4000+ Lumen Test & BridgeLux LED Review!! <-·´¯`·.

Nessus,

Really quick, I just wanted to tell you that you placed the wrong test current numbers next to the forward voltage in your original post (next to price). I looked at the datasheet and it notes that the 880 typical lumen emitter was tested at 900mA (not 1300mA), and the 1200 typical lumen emitter was tested at 1300mA (not 1600mA). If I misread things, tell me and I will edit this post.

With those revised current figures, it makes sense because each emitter is operating at around 75lm/W at it rated currents (the current for which they are binned/identified). I was worried because with the other numbers that you used, one had an efficiency of 52lm/W and the other 62lm/W (while the other two were at 75lm/W).

Great review! It is great seeing other power junkies who like to push limits. Well, with the part being only $40, I could see myself do the same! Thank you for sharing this product. I will have to come back here for more info and discussion. This looks like a decent product to be used in general lighting (oh so cheap too).

EDIT: I take back what I said about its low price for the neutral and warm white models (tints suitable for general lighting). These are not as cheap as the cool whites (which are still a great bargain). I wonder now what the tint looks like on the cool whites. If they do not look too blue, then they could still be used for general lighting (work and cargo lights, emergency lighting, camp lights and such). END EDIT.

Re: .·´¯`·-> !! 4000+ Lumen Test & BridgeLux LED Review!! <-·´¯`·.

Originally Posted by Gryloc

Nessus,

I looked at the datasheet and it notes that the 880 typical lumen emitter was tested at 900mA (not 1300mA), and the 1200 typical lumen emitter was tested at 1300mA (not 1600mA). If I misread things, tell me and I will edit this post.

With those revised current figures, it makes sense because each emitter is operating at around 75lm/W at it rated currents (the current for which they are binned/identified). I was worried because with the other numbers that you used, one had an efficiency of 52lm/W and the other 62lm/W (while the other two were at 75lm/W).

You are correct I had the wrong numbers in there for the Cool White arrays. Actually, those two numbers were for Warm White. Which goes to show how much of an efficiency drop there is at lower color temps. I'll edit it. Thanks for the correction!

Originally Posted by saabluster

Good luck collimating that! Its cool anyway to see these ultra high output LEDs coming on the market. However the LEDs here have no place in a flashlight unless all you want is flood. Thank you so much for doing the testing though. Great work.

It was clear from the outset that tightly collimating these was not going to happen. Hence, my Initial Thought:

The lack of an optic and the wide surface area will make these a perfect candidate for wide area flood lighting but a poor candidate for tightly focused beam patterns.

However, Lux has a very smart idea about using a freznel lense! That is an intriguing experiment I am willing to try!

Re: .·´¯`·-> !! 4000+ Lumen Test & BridgeLux LED Review!! <-·´¯`·.

Very nice testing although I have a few questions/comments about your peltier setup:

1) First off, that heat sink is way too small for a 40mm peltier, even if it's one of the 3 amp ones. If you're going to use a microprocessor heatsink, then the ones for the P4 or the recent multicore processors work best.

2) Did you raise the heat sink so that the fan can still suck in air to cool the heat sink?

3) What is the maximum current rating of your peltier?

4) What was the current you were actually running it at? This is important because the way to get the most cooling from a given peltier/heatsink arrangement is to increase the current in small intervals, wait until the cold side temperature stabilizes (can take 10 minutes or more), increase current again, measure temperature, etc. You stop when the temperature starts increasing, and drop the current back to the previous increment. For an 8.5A peltier running with one of my P4 heatsinks I found that 5.8 amps is the maximum. At that current the temperature of the cold plate, when well insulated, stabilizes at around 48° to 51° C under room temperature. This is usually -30°C, give or take a few degrees, depending upon the temperature in my workshop.

5) You really should have had an aluminum plate on the cold side of the peltier so that all of the thermocouples would be cooling the LED. And it should have been bolted to the heatsink with stainless steel screws and fiber insulating washers, sandwiching the peltier in between the plate and the heatsink. See here (scroll to bottom). Unless mounted properly, you'll get poor performance from peltiers.

Don't mean to be overly critical but I made these comments because it seems like the temperature of the LED shouldn't have gone as high as it did. In fact, just mounting the LED on a decent air-cooled P4 heatsink without a peltier it should have gone no higher than about 40° to 45°C. Temps with a peltier might be better or worse depending upon the peltier's rating. In general if you're cooling a load of ~77 watts like that LED then you'll need a peltier with Qmax of at least twice that. Just for reference Qmax of a typical 8.5 amp peltier is around 70 to 75 watts.

Re: .·´¯`·-> !! 4000+ Lumen Test & BridgeLux LED Review!! <-·´¯`·.

Originally Posted by jtr1962

Very nice testing although I have a few questions/comments about your peltier setup:
1) First off, that heat sink is way too small for a 40mm peltier, even if it's one of the 3 amp ones. If you're going to use a microprocessor heatsink, then the ones for the P4 or the recent multicore processors work best.

...

That is so off topic...
I'm not going to answer in detail to help you hijack my own thread.

I tested many different thermal management techniques for this extreme setup. Nothing about it is inadequate, and you don't have enough information to determine that.

I got case temperatures as low as I possibly could with what I have at my disposal. If that's not good enough for you, then you can open your own thread and we can discuss different Peltier techniques and results there instead of here.

Re: .·´¯`·-> !! 4000+ Lumen Test & BridgeLux LED Review!! <-·´¯`·.

That is so off topic...
I'm not going to answer in detail to help you hijack my own thread.

I tested many different thermal management techniques for this extreme setup. Nothing about it is inadequate, and you don't have enough information to determine that.

I got case temperatures as low as I possibly could with what I have at my disposal. If that's not good enough for you, then you can open your own thread and we can discuss different Peltier techniques and results there instead of here.

For now.... Please stop hijacking my thread.

You need to seriously rethink your response and your attitude. jtr was not trying to hijack your thread. He was trying to help you as he has a lot of experience in this area.

Re: .·´¯`·-> !! 4000+ Lumen Test & BridgeLux LED Review!! <-·´¯`·.

That is so off topic...
I'm not going to answer in detail to help you hijack my own thread.

I tested many different thermal management techniques for this extreme setup. Nothing about it is inadequate, and you don't have enough information to determine that.

I got case temperatures as low as I possibly could with what I have at my disposal. If that's not good enough for you, then you can open your own thread and we can discuss different Peltier techniques and results there instead of here.

For now.... Please stop hijacking my thread.

Fine! Goodbye! And just for the record I think you more or less have a nice setup but I was only trying to help you refine things a bit. But if you would rather not have my help, that's fine. I won't help people who aren't interested.

Re: .·´¯`·-> !! 4000+ Lumen Test & BridgeLux LED Review!! <-·´¯`·.

My 2200 lumen version came in today. Newark ships fast.

I put it on a 2" round aluminum *drop* I had with some thermal paste and fired it up. It is very bright. My eyes were screwed for several minutes after looking at it from the side. I took a FiveMega LOP reflector, bored it out to .750", and placed it over the LED. It didn't look too bad. Definitely all flood though.

I then took the lens out of an Acura TL HID projector I have and placed it over the LED. It's a nice smooth flood. This LED might work in this projector housing, maybe. I don't know. I'm going to experiment with it.